My interest in survival is of the wilderness/short term type. I don't think we'll see TEOTWAWKI in my lifetime, and if it does happen no amount of preparation will guarentee survival. My interest in life is in living it, not merely existing on as a hardscrabble survivor fighting with the cockroaches after Armageddon. True, if it comes to I may have to reconsider. But since there's rarely if ever been a complete worldwide collapse of civilization in all of our written human history, I think it's prudent to devote the bulk of my resources to the emergencies I'm more likely to face.